1. Field of the Invention
The invention concerns a glove, in particular a sports glove for the motorcycle, skiing or surfing sports etc.
2. Description of the Related Art
In many sports, gloves are used to protect hands and/or fingers against injury, cold, wind, rain etc. For the gloves to be able to fulfil all or only several of these protective functions, a certain minimum thickness of the glove material must be provided in processing them. Gloves for motorcyclists, for example, are to protect the hands and/or fingers not only against the influence of wind together with rain or cold, but must also prevent injury to hands or fingers as far as possible in the event of a fall. Particularly motorcycle gloves are for this reason manufactured of comparatively thick material to satisfy the demands made to them as well as possible.
Nevertheless, a compromise must be made in manufacturing, say, motorcycle gloves but also gloves for other sports such as skiing or surfing, for the glove material cannot be given just any desirable thickness. Even though an especially thick material would make for a particularly abrasion-resistant and sturdy motorcycle glove for the case of falls, such a motorcycle glove would eventually have such a great stiffness that a bending motion of the single fingers toward the closed position of the hand in order to close a grip, e.g. on the motorcycle handlebar or hand throttle, would require too much strength. A motorcycle glove of such a thick material would furthermore be disadvantageous inasmuch as the actions required to actuate switches e.g. for turn signal, headlight etc. could in this case not be performed conveniently and with a sure aim any more. The gloves, particularly motorcycle gloves, must consequently be manufactured with smaller material thicknesses than is actually desirable under the aspect of safety.
This problem of gloves becoming bulky and awkward whenever the material thickness is selected to provide optimum protective function, whereby particularly the bending motions of the single fingers toward the closed position of the hand and above all maintaining this closed position demand excessive strength, is also met in other sports gloves, for example skiing gloves.
In order to remedy this problem at least approximately, it is known to anatomically preform the glove. As a rule, this is achieved by the palm portion of the glove having a reduced longitudinal extension in comparison with the dorsal portion, whereby a glove thus manufactured receives a pre-bend approximately corresponding to the bent position of the fingers in the relaxed rest position of the hand.
Examples of such pre-bent gloves are described in AT-PS 170 496, DE-OS 23 08 245 and DE-PS 22 54 675.
Although wearing comfort is increased by the anatomical adaptation of such a glove to the natural, relaxed hand position, there nevertheless still occur problems with wearing such a glove whenever a tubular component is to be encompassed by the gloved hand, such as in the case of the handlebar or hand throttle of a motorcycle, the handle portion of a ski stick or the mast of a surfboard or sailboard. Depending on the diameter of the tubular component, the fingers of the hand must be bent more or less strongly toward the closed or fist position of the hand and kept in this position. The force required to move the single glove fingers into the bent position by overcoming the inherent stiffness of the glove material and particularly to maintain them there--even over a prolonged period of time in the case of a motorcycle glove--increases with the degree to which the single fingers must be bent or crooked.
Even anatomically pre-bent gloves such as those in accordance with the above mentioned documents are hardly fit to remedy this drawback because the pre-bend of those known gloves substantially conforms with the curvature of the human hand in its relaxed rest position; even stronger pre-bending of the single fingers is, however, for the most part undesirable as it would first of all give the glove an unappealing, claw-like appearance and would furthermore make it difficult to put on and take off such a strongly pre-bent glove. In addition, the stiffness of the glove material would equally have to be overcome in order to move the fingers from the crooked position, corresponding to a closed position, into an approximately straight position corresponding to the extended position, with the additional difficulty of having to overcome the dispositions (cutting or the like) producing the strong pre-bend of the glove fingers. It is moreover generally known that the human hand is capable of generating great forces while moving the fingers from their extended positions into the closed positions, whereas the forces applicable by a hand in the reverse direction are comparatively small. Transferring a strongly pre-bent glove from the closed positions to the extended positions of its fingers would consequently be extremely difficult and strenuous.
From DE-GM 79 12 393 a generic glove has become known. This glove is characterised by being equipped with one or several spring elements biasing the glove fingers into a closed gripping position. In accordance with DE-GM 79 12 393, these spring elements preferably are inflatable air cushions disposed on the outside of the glove fingers, and in a given case also on the outside of the glove thumb. Owing to these air cushions--where at all capable to retain air over a prolonged period of time --the single glove fingers and the thumb, if provided for, are urged into a closed position. Although the problems described in the introduction, which may occur in a sports glove whenever strong bending or crooking of the glove fingers is required for gripping an object over a prolonged period of time, are overcome by the generic glove, this advantage can only be obtained by incurring the drawback also described above, namely that such a glove permits gripping motions only against resistance and may--if at all--be shifted into an extended position of the glove fingers only by exerting great force. The generic glove in accordance with DE-GM 79 12 393 moreover suffers from the disadvantage of the claw-like appearance mentioned above even when not in use.